OK, here’s an intense concept compilation: 99 tracks, each exactly 45 seconds long. How does this work as an album? By assembling tracks by several dozen little known experimental artists, including many whose click-and-glitch style is made for the short of patience. Within this, you have a dauntingly diverse collection of sounds, grooves and experiments, reminiscent of an old Negativland album. There are few names to note: DJ Spooky and Silver Apples make contributions, but otherwise, who knows? Never boring, because nothing lasts that long. Mostly mellow, mostly instrumental, open-minded music you will probably never hear elsewhere. The bedroom-studio generation speaks.
Hallucinogen In Dub
British trance label Twisted is letting the groove mellow for a minute. Six tracks by Simon Postford are dipped in a pot of dub by remixer OTT. The result is full of deep atmospherics, huge bubbling basslines, dripping synth tones, cascading whispers and murmurs, and the crackle of percussion floating on top. Soundscapes reminiscent of The Orb’s landmark 1992 single “Blue Room” seem to be the template here. But dubby trance has come a long way in ten years. Or has it? While lush and hypnotic, this music is hollow, succumbing to the overly mechanical sound of many digital dub recordings. After-hours music after its time.
Fragment Orchestra Fragment Orchestra
Fragment Orchestra are Luca Pernici and Giulio Vetrone. As you may have guessed, they’re Italians. Groovy Italians, in fact, as this lovely little collection of supine nuggets testifies. The duo (who also run the Maffia Sound System together) are known for their gently coruscating sound sculptures, and this LP is full of their trademark blissed-out beats. If you can dig weightless grooves that float around in warm washes of sound, softly plucked bass and wistful vibes-glissandos without sounding like the bottom of the ambient barrel is being scraped yet again, you’ll die for this. Lush with a capital Shhhhhh.
Various Artists Alex Attias Presents The Chromantic Universe
Alex “Mustang” Attias should need no introduction to followers of West London and Munich’s syncopated dancefloor licks and jazz-based downtempo groovology. Chromantic profiles Attias’s own Visions imprint, containing a host of his own erudite productions to date, as well as some collabos and a few guest cuts from fellow Londoners Domu, Dego and I.G. Culture. Starting with the autumnal-melancholoy and ’60s jazz 3/4 swing of Attias and keyboardist Jessica Lauren’s “Waltz For Eva,” the album moves through Xela Saitta’s warm, broken-soul number “Daylight”; Mustang’s ethereal shattered techno outing “Transitions”; the dope oboe-bassoon-and trombone-addled “Cascade”; and the funky African bap of “Waenda” by promising newcomer Emelda. An endlessly colorful and beautifully fluid compilation.
Acimo Acimo
Achim Vogel-graphic artist, painter, comedian-here presents his take on the art of beats and basslines. Vogel’s relationship with music began when his sculptor/musician father gave him lessons in improvisation, classical and jazz at a young age. Hence his debut LP could be considered a somewhat advanced document. Certainly it has a melodic richness and textural diversity that would be unachievable for many on a first outing. Using deep house and syncopated “broken” riddims to propel his Hammond funk noodles and jazzy flourishes, Acimo has created an enigmatic album that keeps your mind guessing and your hips swaying.
Moving Fusion Start of Something
Ram Recordings protégés Moving Fusion have done well carving their own little niche on the d & b scene. An album, of course, is usually the real test of a producer’s capability, though with the era of “concept” drum & bass LPs pretty much over (thank god), artists are more likely to come up with a collection of twelves than anything overly sprawling. Start Of Something is exactly that-a series of tight, bass-quaking rollers that range from full-on terror banquets to steel-drum feasts and Latino mini-snacks. Accomplished and straight to the point.
Various Artists Heimfidelity Vol. 5
As his goodbye to an “era,” Pierre’s tribute to his long-running techno club Stammheim dismisses sentimentality, reveling instead in a goofy, sexed-up hedonism. From its tight, minimalist get-go, Heimfidelity is all about the launch into projectile arcs. Remixed tracks by Matthew Herbert and Christian Vogel shift weights on their downbeats back and forth with the anticipation of an eager colt, slightly unsteady but never unsure. The collection bumps and clips along, gaining funky momentum until it bursts through the gates full-speed with Thomas Brinkmann’s “Chevrolet Corvette.” It’s a swaggering, smarmy track shot through with revving engines that forgoes coy teasing for direct come-ons. Snappy and limber, Heimfidelity‘s heated jock-jam bluster is no thick-necked beefcake-it’s sinewy techno machismo that weakens the knees.
Books On Tape Throw Down Your Laptops
Mixing guitar chords with shuffling breakbeats of various tempos in spy-chase like sequences, Books on Tape proclaims its stance as “beatpunk,” and features members of indie bands Bright Eyes and Slow Coach guesting with main man Todd Books. Forgiving the “we’re so punk that we’re making electronic music!” attitude, Throw Down‘s got occasional out-of-the-ordinary moments, mostly when some yelping vocals are thrown in, though any rawness they might possess is constrained by unyielding beats. The entire album feels flattened somehow, though, devoid of an energy that really ought to be leaping out at the listener. Seems “Books on Tape” is an appropriate moniker-colorfully good on paper, but a lesser rendering in 3-D.
Sarah Peebles Insect Groove
Sarah Peebles conflates the naturally pristine with the artificially destructive in an experimental album of unsettling beauty. Insect Grooves utilizes the innovative Cycling ’74 Max patches to create real-time loop-based performances featuring East Asian instrumentation and samples of flora, fauna and mechanical whirs. The resulting eerie soundscapes challenge the listener to identify the source; is it the buzzing of insectile feelers or the ominous approach of machinery that’s set on “devastate?” Peebles’s use of the sho (an ancient Japanese mouth organ) and guest musician Jin Hi Kim’s of the electrified komungo (a classical Korean zither) further blur the line between ancient and upstart. Compressing vast stretches of ecological time into a dense, delicately trembling hour, Peebles’s work flaps its butterfly wings and rains on our fatalistic notions of the linearity of time and technological “progress.”
Noel Zancanella A Fantasy for Electromagnetic Tape
Noel Zancanella’s Fantasy culls from vinyl samples and vintage instrumentation to create a classy and polite album in the vein of Shadow and RJD2. Not to say that rudeness necessarily makes for more flava, but Fantasy‘s courteous headnodders, while certainly pretty and pleasant, seem hesitant to make moves that might result in accidentally spilling on the couch. With lyrical boosts from Surpass Flavor adding to the atmospherics, A Fantasy for Electromagnetic Tape is for the smooth-grooving, well-mannered hip-hopper who wipes the funk off his shoes before he comes into the house.
